Our bodies and minds are one. Physical health and mental health are inextricably bound together. But we can easily lose sight of how poorly and infrequently this basic truth is reflected in the systems we’ve developed to care for ourselves and one another.

In order to catalyze the expansion of telemedicine in Texas, the Texas Health Improvement Network (THIN) has released 11 recommendations to policymakers in the areas of telemedicine infrastructure, start-up challenges, regulatory issues, and legal issues.

Using all Texas birth records for 2015, researchers calculated zip-code-level measures for smoking during pregnancy, pre-pregnancy obesity, and utilization of prenatal care for zip codes in which there were 100 or more births.

In 2016, less than a third of Texas adolescents were up-to-date on human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations, according to a new report from researchers at The University of Texas System and UT Health Northeast. Only Wyoming, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah had HPV vaccination coverage levels lower than Texas.

THIN is a multi-institutional, cross-sector network of researchers, experts, and leaders in population health improvement. Its 24-member Advisory Council includes representatives from a broad range of major stakeholders in state health policy, care, and prevention.

This fall we are holding our inaugural Healthier Texas Summit, on November 6-7 in Austin. It represents our initiative’s first major project, and will build on the great work that IT’S TIME TEXAS has done with its annual summit over the past few years.

On June 1, 2017, The University of Texas at Dallas enacted a comprehensive tobacco-free policy, prohibiting all forms of tobacco use on campus. It was a significant moment not just for the campus and its students, faculty, and staff, but for the entire University of Texas System

3,403 Texans died from suicide in 2015, the most recent year for which there are numbers. This is more than double the number killed by homicide, and was the second leading cause of death for ages 15-24, after unintentional injuries (e.g. car accidents). Suicide was the fourth leading cause of death for ages 15-64.

The June issue includes stories on the future of mental health, the link between liver cancer in Latinos and certain foods, a new vaccine for Zika, and more. To subscribe to Texas Health Journal, click here.

David Lakey, Associate Vice Chancellor for Population Health, and Andy Keller, CEO of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, argue that the state has an historic opportunity to reform the state hospital system.

All 14 institutions of The University of Texas System will be tobacco free by the end of this academic year, making it the first public university system in Texas to become fully tobacco free. It will also become the largest single employer in Texas to prohibit tobacco use in the workplace.

Texas has a serious mental health problem. Far too often, and far too expensively, we’re dealing with it through our criminal justice system and other systems poorly designed to help and support people with mental health challenges

Jennifer Howse, Ph.D., president of March of Dimes, will keynote Healthy Beginnings 2016, a two-day educational conference for perinatal health professionals in Texas. The conference will be held Nov. 15-16 and is being hosted by the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies (TCHMB), a joint initiative of The University of Texas System and the Texas Department of State Health Services.